When I was eight month pregnant I fully discovered instagram. I could not sleep at night, I had to pee every two hours and I was eating kilograms of almonds to ease that horrible heartburn.

I was over sensitive, my IQ was quickly degenerating and I could not keep myself focused on anything for a longer time /well except for drawing/. I was lying in the bed at night completely taken over by insomnia looking through instargam, impetuously searching for cool mothers of little babies as a proof that life after giving birth can be so much fun. I was obsessively clicking the follow button, common cool mamas show me what you got.

My instagram feed was one long ode on perfect life with perfect little people, perfect content mothers, perfect good looking wifes, perfect happy smiling kids that never throw themselves on the floor in the middle of the street screaming, perfect bearded husbands in perfect ironed white clean tshirts, perfect meals on perfect tables, perfect happy dogs in perfect little gardens in perfect little world that I took for real. I needed to believe that it is real because I was freaking out myself.

One year after L was born I started looking at my instagram feed again I obsessively unfollowed all the cool mamas. They were pissing me of. Not because I still had 5 kilos overweight, not because I my skin was bad, not because I was constantly tired and I did not care for fancy table with fancy looking food, not because I had to wear long pants even when it was hot outside cause I rarely shaved my legs. I was tired of all that perfect. It did not make me feel good because it was so unreal. I knew those were just bits and pieces of someone else’s life that has dark sides as well, but perfect is so not authentic, so not interesting and I just did not want to look at it.

I enjoyed my life the way it was, I did my own parenting choices, and was pretty sure I do MY best. But I realised now social media uncontrollably put pressure on people. In that case on mothers. /I mentioned that before that shortly after L was born I realised that motherhood/parenthood and everything that connects to it is so scary militant/. Actually mothers put pressure on mothers because of what they publicly reveal or better to say not reveal. The picture that is presented does not allow, can not allow for critic. Nobody wants to be criticised in such a sensitive matter as parenting, because that is something we all try to do best. And when there are not so positive moments shared it is done in such a way that it makes it actually look fun. But generally we naturally unconsciously select what we show to the world. When we are happy and we sure want to share those happy moments and when it comes to our weakness and dark sides we don’t want to be judged, at least not in the system that is limited only to instant pictures of not instant life. Judgements come very easy online. Everybody has something to say. It is so easy to just write a short statement without really knowing the person, forget it and scroll further, but the one on the other side that receives it does not forget, not that fast. And so to keep ourself safe and happy we share happy moments. Right?

That is why I stopped looking at other people, stopped comparing myself with that partial truth that I was receiving. I did not care. I created my own perfectly imperfect world where the only thing I wanted was to have enough silence to be able to hear my own voice. I breastfed L /and still am/, we were co-sleeping /and still are/, I never left him cry out, I never left him sleep in a different room, I was carrying him in carrier/and still am/ we were traveling a lot . I was pretty happy with being able to make my decisions without applying all those well meant advises on raising kids. I filtered all the suggestions on parenting books no matter if it was on attachment parenting or it was some american lady teaching me how to be a french mama. NO thank you. I believed that what is best for my child is written in my genes.

And that was the time when my texts got published on larger platform than just my blog. I agreed on that of course because I did not know what that actually means. My blog was this intimate space that I always treated as if it was for friends, or for people who read it because somehow we have the same flow and same view on life, very tight community.

But than it went out to the world. The world that was alien, big and unpersonal. And I was not ready for it although I did not know. Those who were following my blog they knew my way of writing, they knew my humour, my self irony and could read between the lines. Those who just read my text as one of many had no idea who I am, who is that crazy lady scared to leave her child go on a walk with a nanny. And of course internet begs for fast, explicit, strong judgements. I can take critic when it comes to many things, but when I got judged as mother I got hurt. Terribly hurt. It was not only about me anymore, it was about Leo. His life that was created by me was judged. And of course as all of us I was trying to do my best for the most valuable person in my life.

Did it make me unsure? Yes it did, maybe not unsure as a mother after all because nothing changed in the way I raise L, but it made me unsure as a person.

That is when I started to question what I was doing. That is when I was not sure if I want to share myself anymore because I absolutely did not feel like I should be defending myself for being the way I am, for my life and for my choices, for being imperfect, for making mistakes and having downs and doubts but being honest.

I knew I can not write about me, our life, about us selectively. Either I write it as it is or I don’t. I can’t pretend I am somebody else because it would make me very tired. And most of all writing about us meant including Leo. I knew I am not strong enough to stand naked and have shit thrown all over me from faceless creatures. But than much more important things than my blog completely took over my life, and it became so imperfect at one point that even the biggest masochist would not want to read about it voluntarily anyway :).

New Year came with a promise of change. I am ready to stand on the starting line, I’m letting things go by and just grab those that seem to be harmless one at the time. But most of all we are back to traveling and that is something essentially important for us. Thanks to travel plans we are healing as a couple because there is a strong vibe of energy around us just when we speak about it. I am healing because I not only allowed myself to fall down but I gave myself the time to get up slowly. For that matter Sicily was the best cure on all the open wounds. We were happy, we were us again, I was happy and light and free and that is why I am here now.

PS: THANK YOU ALL FOR THE COMMENTS ON MY PREVIOUS POST AND ALL THE EMAILS. I AM PRETTY SURE YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW MUCH THAT MEANT TO ME

We made a decision to visit Venice in winter time already in October…I think we both must have been in very sentimental mood as we talked about it….remember Mr.B showed me some painting like photos of empty streets in Venice covered with snow and it just looked perfect…. besides Venice was also the place we first went together for a trip not even knowing if we make a couple or not….it felt unfair that the city where we ate loads of pizza, drunk way too much vine, made love most of the time and where we decided we gonna try to be together is the city which Mr.T never seen…So all this together made up our mind and we decided to spend there New Year ….BUT our trip did not quite turned out as we imagined…our car broke down in Austria on the way and we had to leave it in service to have it fixed….waiting 2 hours for a help in freezing cold I got so sick that I spent most of the time in Venice blowing my nose, taking all kinds of pills that I did not know and ended up with fever almost unconscious in bed on 1.1…..Mr.T had some shitting problems because he was eating can food and got really pissed with us when we made him walk for hours in rain which he hates most of all…but apart from this little annoying details we walked 60 km around the city and discovered its beauty again….Venice in winter is magic..it is a movie set for a movie you make for yourself

I m back in Vienna since yesterday….happy to see Mr.T smiling at me in the morning again…we went for a nice walk along Danube…did some shopping at the market…vegetables were not as good as the ones we were eating in Israel but still thousand times better than so called “vegetables” in slovak supermarkets…actually in Israel I realized how much I am used to eating vegetables which differ from each other only by shape and color but not by taste, cause they all taste like colored potatoes pretending hard to be tomatoes or pepper and sometimes even cucumber…anyway I m at the point of sorting things over here again, preparing to start new semester and mainly scanning films from Tuscany meanwhile my tan is pealing of and weather does not look like promised spring at all…but there are 35 negatives from Israel on the way so after all it is good that it rains…

PS:…I realized today that there was a guy called Mr.T who had a show or something called I pity the fool….What a freaky coincidence …..my Mr.T loves fools cause he knows I am one wannabe

…. second week in tuscany……. third place we’r staying at ….…. second day raining ….…. ? bottles of white wine ….…. ? bottels of red wine ……. ? amount of pizzas ….…. ? kilos gained ….…. one and a half day of deep depression ….…. 2300 km done ….…. 6 rolls of film ….…. 5 movies watched ….…. one fight with Mr.B ….…. zero fights with Mr.T ….…. two days left ….

I have a big problem with eating culture in Italy…first of all I can not eat whenever I want…I have to be hungry during designated hours, which means that if I get hungry between 15.00 to 18.00 I can either cook myself or go to sleep…but on the other hand in the evening these crazy people go to restaurant at 20.00 and get themselves a nice five course dinner…with the best will we tried this custom…I did not sleep all night, concentrating very much but unsuccessfully on digesting and Mr.B solved the situation at two o’clock at night, when he decided to puke it all out…otherwise all good till now…I keep being stubborn and shoot only film so I cant upload anything…but Master B is being more than productive testing digital Leica and uploading some nice picturesque landscapes on his blog…well what else to shoot in Tuscany :)

I don't want my life to be a reason for other's life to be a suffering that is why I am vegan and that is how I want to raise my son. I love my little family, birds, rainy days and life on the road. I believe in life before death :).